"Not a week goes by that somewhere in the United States an individual is not killed or murdered in some kind of gangland battle or a witness is not garroted and killed." - Robert Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General, testifying before the McClellan Committee on organized crime, September, 1963.

It would take years to review the hundreds of volumes that have been written on the Kennedy Assassination. The picture is not one of cohesive theory, but rather a patchwork of troubling events, perplexing witness testimony, circumstantial evidence and personal opinion that stretches across the gamut from a "massive government plot" to full and stubborn support of the Warren Commission report. We have a broad spectrum from Robert Groden and Jim Marrs on one end to Gerald Posner and Jim Moore on the other making conflicting claims and assumptions until the truth is so obscured as to be indiscernible from myth and conjecture.

The very fact that there is such a wide disparity in opinion ought to count for something. On the subject of the JFK Assassination, there is no such thing as common wisdom or irrefutable evidence. We know Kennedy was murdered in Dealey Plaza at 12:35 PM on November 22, 1963. Abraham Zapruder's old 8mm color film documented that all too vividly. We know that bullet fragments were removed from both Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally's bodies. We know that the Dallas Police found a sniper's nest next to a window in the southeast corner of the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository building, which overlooks the scene of the crime. We know that they found a 6.5 mm Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and later arrested Lee Harvey Oswald as the prime suspect in the deaths of Dallas officer J.D. Tippit and President Kennedy.

Those are the salient facts. But underneath those facts lurks a shadowy world of rumor, legend, cover-up, incompetent investigation and political agenda. The swirling fog of theories is almost impossible to untangle and eventually begins to sound like the children's game of Clue: "Mr. Green did it in the kitchen with a candlestick".    During my research, I've discovered more inconsistencies than I could possibly list, and the weight of those inconsistencies lies equally with the Warren Commission and its apologists as well as the conspiracy theory work.   Anyone who endeavors to study the JFK Assassination should take a large dose of skepticism beforehand.

We should approach this just as law enforcement agencies approach any murder case. That is, a legitimate suspect must have Motive, Means, and Opportunity. I would add one more criteria, and that is common sense.  There are some aspects of this case and the body of conspiracy theory that beg for common sense, even though a subject's odd behavior or a coincidental event may support an author's more sensational theory.

So why is there a body of conspiracy theories around the Kennedy Assassination in the first place? Simply put, the official government report, filed and published by the Warren Commission, is incomplete and full of holes. It bears the mark of a work designed to substantiate preconceived notions rather than to get at any real truth. The Warren Commission cited these crucial "facts" in their conclusion that L. Oswald acted alone in the murder of Kennedy:

• Lee Harvey Oswald was a known Communist sympathizer, a loner and a radical. J. Edgar Hoover described him as a "nut". There is a record of his having distributed "Fair Play for Cuba" leaflets on a New Orleans street corner.
• He was also an expert marksman, based on his Marine Corps record.
• He acquired the 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano via mail order under the alias "Alek Hidell".
• He carried that rifle to his place of employment (The Texas School Book Depository) in a brown bag on the morning of November 22, 1963.  Analysis of cloth fibers connect Oswald to this package.
• He then fired 3 shots with that bolt-action rifle in a period of 5.6 seconds as the Presidential motorcade moved down Elm Street below his window in the Southeast corner of the 6th floor, Texas School Book Depository building. One bullet missed the Presidential limousine and struck a nearby curb. One shot struck the President in the back of the neck, exited his throat, then went through John Connally's right shoulder and entered the Governor's leg. The third shot entered the back of Kennedy's head and killed him.
• Oswald then wiped down the weapon and ran down 4 flights of stairs to the TSBD cafeteria, where a Dallas Police officer found him calmly drinking a Coca-Cola 90 seconds after the shots were fired.
• Immediately after that, Oswald left the building and went home. There, he allegedly got out a revolver, left his home and was stopped by Officer J.D. Tippit. During the ensuing encounter, he shot Tippit to death.

Each of these points has been questioned extensively, however, and the Commission's conclusions called into doubt:

• There is substantial evidence that Oswald was merely posing as a Communist sympathizer.   There is evidence which suggests that he had contacts in both mob circles and those of the CIA. Names such as David Ferrie, Guy Bannister, Jack Ruby, and others continually come up in the accounts of multiple witnesses.  And furthermore, the street corner on which he passed them out was directly under the windows of Guy Bannister, ex-FBI agent and ardent anti-Communist. There is even evidence to suggest that the man the CIA claims was Oswald, photographed in Mexico City in October of 1963, was not in fact Oswald at all.
• Oswald's marksmanship was not exceptional. In fact, his Marine peers remember him as being clumsy with a weapon. His highest range score was only 2 points above the middle rating (expert) for the service. And this was from a stable position, not under duress, using a semi-automatic rifle (he had no known experience with a bolt-action rifle such as the Carcano). Attempts by both the FBI and the CBS network to duplicate the firing feat in Dealey Plaza with master marksmen have consistently failed. Even the FBI's best marksmen could not manage to hit a moving target at that range twice within 5.6 seconds with the poorly-built and sighted Mannlicher-Carcano bolt action weapon.
• The links between Oswald and the rifle are dubious. The one photo linking Oswald to the weapon, taken in his backyard, has been questioned as a hoax, doctored for purposes of framing Oswald. (His wife, Marina, claims she took it.)  At the time of his arrest, the only fingerprints found on the rifle were on the magazine housing and trigger guard. The FBI fingerprint expert, Sebastian Latona, told the Warren Commission the prints were of "no value". In other words, they could not positively identify them as belonging to Oswald.  The Dallas Police lifted a palmprint from the underside of the rifle's barrel but it was not forwarded to the FBI until November 26, four days after the murder.  The process of lifting the print removed it from the weapon, however.
• The weapon itself was not the kind of weapon a trained assassin would choose for such a task. The Mannlicher-Carcano is a shoddy weapon of Italian manufacture, not built for quality. In fact, FBI experts had to place metal shims under the scope brackets to zero the rifle to tolerable accuracy before they were able to test it.
• The witness who claims Oswald was carrying a brown package on that morning, Buell Wesley Frazier, also noted that the package was carried under Oswald's arm, cupped in the palm of his hand and nestled under his armpit. A Carcano rifle, broken into parts, is 34.8 inches long.  Frazier said the package was 24 inches long.  His sister, Linnie Mae Randle, remembers the package as 27 inches long.  The Commission reports that the bag found on the sixth floor of the Depository was 38 inches long.  When shown the bag, Ms. Randle claimed the bag she saw "wasn't that long".  The Commission swept this discrepancy under the rug and claim that both Frazier and his sister are mistaken.
• There is evidence that there were not three shots fired in Dealey Plaza, but four. A number of witnesses who were standing close to the grassy knoll have claimed as much since the moment of the shootings. Then, during the 1978 House Select Committee on the Assassination hearings, the acoustical lab firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc., analyzed a Dallas Police department dictabelt tape of the crucial few moments, captured when Dallas motorcycle officer H.B. McLain's microphone button was stuck in the "on" position. Their statistical data was reviewed by yet a second firm, Weiss and Aschkenasy. The result was a 95 percent confidence that a fourth shot had, indeed, come from the area of the grassy knoll -- identified to within 5 feet of his probable location! This evidence was strong enough to convince the HSCA to conclude that there was, in all likelihood, a conspiracy to kill the President.
• The Warren Commission, whose report was initially accepted as the final word on the assassination, did not have the full cooperation of either the FBI or the CIA. J. Edgar Hoover, according to 1963 Assistant Director William C. Sullivan, was strongly opposed to a thorough inquiry "for fear it would discover important and relevant facts that we in the FBI had not discovered", mainly that Oswald had been FBI connections. The CIA, on the other hand, was concerned about the second-guessing and doubt any inquiry would inevitably inspire in the press and, so, issued a policy to its agents to only supply answers to specific inquiries and to volunteer nothing.
• The most damning refutation yet given to the Warren Commission report is their insistence that the second bullet, the one which hit Kennedy's back, also continued through him, turned upwards, exited his throat, entered Connally's shoulder, turned downwards, struck him in the thigh and then miraculously "fell out" in a stretcher in Parkland hospital missing only 4 grains of matter and ending its torturous journey in pristine condition. This is referred to as the "magic bullet", or exhibit CE399.
• Attempts by Warren Commission investigators to re-enact Oswald's moments up in the window were not successful. The only way the re-enactors could fire 3 shots in 5.6 seconds, then run down 4 flights of stairs and be in the cafeteria within 90 seconds was if they did not wipe the fingerprints from the rifle.  Author Gerald Posner has attempted to rectify this dilemna by claiming the sniper actually had 8.5 seconds in which to shoot.
• Eyewitness testimony to Tippit's murder is inconsistent. The Commission reports that "at least" 12 witnesses saw the murder.  Five of them identified Oswald as the murderer in a police lineup that evening with a sixth doing so on November 23.   Three others identified Oswald from police photographs.  And yet subsequent investigation by researchers shows that at least two of the chief witnesses, Helen Markham and Ted Callaway, give starkly contradictory testimony on Oswald's actions and clothing.

There is also the troubling fact that a number of people had foreknowledge of the assassination. Wealthy right-winger Joseph Milteer was caught on tape telling an undercover Miami police officer exactly how the hit would be carried out. Mob boss Santo Trafficante made very similar comments on several occasions, and Louisiana mob boss Carlos Marcello's activities during the period up to Nov. 22, 1963, would indicate complicity as well. More than one person knew ahead of time that Kennedy would not leave Dallas alive.

It does not stop there, however. Some of the doctors present at Kennedy's autopsy claim that the photos eventually released to the public are not the same thing they saw in the morgue that day. They distinctly recall seeing a gaping hole in the BACK of Kennedy's skull, but that has been airbrushed or doctored in the published autopsy photos. In any event, the forensic investigation was botched badly. The bullet hole in the front of Kennedy's throat was cut wider during attempts to resuscitate him in Parkland, obliterating that wound if there was, indeed, a wound to begin with. Key X-rays have been lost. Photos have been doctored.

Any attempt at a murder cover-up, of course, would have to involve eliminating witnesses. Has that happened in the case of the JFK Assassination? Beyond a doubt. The list of names and the circumstances of their deaths stretch like a trail of stale fish from Oswald himself to innocent bystanders and mob associates alike. In the five years after Kennedy's death, nearly 60 people with direct knowledge of the assassination died untimely deaths. These mysterious deaths have also succeeded in silencing other potential witnesses who feared for their lives. Why would Jack Ruby, a known mob figure, essentially throw his own life away to kill Oswald on national TV if it were really, as he says, out of concern for Jacqueline? Why would he nervously insist until his death that the real truth had not come out about the assassination? Why wasn't his action officially recognized for what it was -- a standard organized crime technique for silencing witnesses?

There is enough testimony and evidence available now to establish a "reasonable doubt" that would acquit Oswald in a court of law. The American Bar Association, in fact, conducted two mock trials in 1996. The first resulted in a hung jury. The second acquitted Oswald of the assassination.

At the very least, the mountains of eyewitness testimony, strange coincidence and circumstantial evidence should cast long shadows of doubt on the conclusions of the Warren Commission. At the very worst, the entire epic smacks heavily of conspiracy, cover-up, and a violent coup d'etat that changed forever the course of American politics and public trust. Until and unless the central questions are answered, the murder of John Kennedy has not been solved. Until that happens and the forces involved are brought to justice, we cannot be certain that the political integrity of our system is intact. Until that day, we are living a lie.

"It is important to all of us to find out what happened to President Kennedy. Because what happened to him could happen to anybody else. If a conspiracy can kill the President of the United States, who among us is safe?" - Robert Groden

"If they lied to us, how much are they lying to us in other areas? And if they're lying to us, can they do it again and again and again? If so, this is not a democracy. It's a hierarchy -- a government or people run by certain powerful individuals who have the ability to dispose of anyone not going along with the party lines." - Gary Shaw